Posted!

Join the Conversation

Comments

Welcome to our new and improved comments, which are for subscribers only.
This is a test to see whether we can improve the experience for you.
You do not need a Facebook profile to participate.

You will need to register before adding a comment.
Typed comments will be lost if you are not logged in.

Please be polite.
It's OK to disagree with someone's ideas, but personal attacks, insults, threats, hate speech, advocating violence and other violations can result in a ban.
If you see comments in violation of our community guidelines, please report them.

Photo from “Cincinnati: An Illustrated Timeline”: The fallen sign of the Beverly Hills Supper Club marks the tragedy where 165 people lost their lives in 1977. (The Cincinnati Enquirer/Ed Reinke) Provided

Photo from “Cincinnati: An Illustrated Timeline”: Terminally ill Mount St. Joseph University basketball player Lauren Hill receives applause at her first college game. (The Cincinnati Enquirer/Liz Dufour) Provided

Photo from “Cincinnati: An Illustrated Timeline”: Jim Obergefell, left, and John Arthur are married by officiant Paulette Roberts on a private jet in Maryland. (The Cincinnati Enquirer/Glenn Hartong) Provided

Jeff Suess has been something of a time traveler over the past eight years. Researching and writing "Our History" for The Enquirer and writing several books about Cincinnati history has taken him from frontier settlement to steamboat city, to public markets, opera houses and murder trials.

His latest book, "Cincinnati: An Illustrated Timeline," travels through many of the most important events of Cincinnati history, arranged in a chronological timeline. It tells the story of the Queen City, with all its ups and downs, starting with the Adena burial mounds here centuries before white settlers arrived, up to 2019 when Fiona the hippo was born and FC Cincinnati joined Major League Soccer.

Suess said he'd been wanting to write an overarching history of Cincinnati, something that made connections between different events over time. "There are a lot of different historical versions of Cincinnati described in history," he said. "I wanted to include all of them, and connect them."

Book cover of “Cincinnati: An Illustrated Timeline” by Jeff Suess(Photo: Provided)

With 230 years since the city's founding, there were a lot of moments to choose from. "I chose the moments that made an impact on the city, and some that were just unique and interesting," said Suess. Like when Evel Knievel jumped 14 buses at Kings Island in 1975. Or the time the Reds traded their best player, Frank Robinson. "People still grumble about that," said Suess.

"Most of the things we associate with our history, like Music Hall and Graeter's and the Reds come from the 1870s and '80s," said Suess. "But Cincinnati was really at its height earlier: before the Civil War. Cincinnati's reputation as a Queen City was justified at that time with everything going on in politics and culture."

Suess said he was impressed by the number of innovations that pop up early along the timeline. The founding of the Western Museum by Daniel Drake and John James Audubon's in 1820, Nicholas Longworth's winemaking in 1823, the manufacturing innovations of Porkopolis starting about 1830, and the founding of Procter and Gamble, based on those Porkopolis byproducts.

The nation's first professional fire department, the building of the Roebling Suspension bridge and the growth of American Reform Judaism were all new and significant when they happened in Cincinnati.

"I think one of the most interesting firsts was the first weather bulletin developed by meteorologist Cleveland Abbe of the Cincinnati Observatory," said Suess. "He noticed that the weather that occurred in Chicago or St. Louis would be followed by the same conditions here. He enlisted telegraph operators to alert him to the weather, from which he could make a forecast for Cincinnati."

Cleveland Abbe was the first head of the U.S. Weather Bureau.(Photo: Library of Congress/Provided)

There are later innovations, too. Did you know Play-Doh was invented in Cincinnati, starting life as wallpaper cleaner?

Suess also includes the construction of iconic Cincinnati buildings that still exist and continue to tell a story to us now. Many of these are from the later part of the 19th century, like the Zoo, Hebrew Union College, Music Hall (1878), Eden Park, (also 1878), City Hall (1893) and The Art Museum (1886). "The Taft Museum is a perfect example of that. It was built early in the city's history. Nicholas Longworth lived there, the Taft family bought it, and William Howard Taft accepted the nomination for the Presidency there." You can put yourself into that history when you go there.

He also wanted to make sure he included darker moments. "For instance, you can see race tensions starting back in the 1820s and 1840s, not being resolved, and erupting again," said Suess. Those include the mobs that attacked the abolitionist newspaper Philanthropist in 1836, riots of 1841 when a white mob stormed into Bucktown, a mostly African-American neighborhood near Broadway, and re-erupted in 1967 and 2001.

He was able to use a stunning collection of photographs to go with the moments he chose, many from the archives of The Enquirer. It wasn't easy to whittle it down. At one point, he had 350 events on the timeline and 500 photos he wanted to use.

Photo from “Cincinnati: An Illustrated Timeline”: The Bengals and Chargers face off in the “Freezer Bowl.” (The Cincinnati Enquirer/Gerry Wolter)(Photo: Provided)

While it was hard enough to choose moments from the past to include in the book, "it was harder to choose the more recent moments," said Suess. "What are people 20 years from now going to think were the important moments from this time in history?"